I don't think it's fair for this week to be so chock-full of stuff I want to play given what next week looks like...
Kicking a hole in your drywall and throwing an occupied beehive into it this week is Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, a game that looks at The Legend of Zelda and says "What if you had a Yoyo instead?". And since that question was already handily answered by Startropics, appended it by saying "And you were a freaky little rabbit guy who looks like an Ed Roth drawing?
And now you have my attention. I have also just learned I've been confusing Ed Roth with Eli Roth for years
Anyhow, it's a Zeldo, you're a hyperkinetic rabbity thing with a yo-yo and you've opted to throw some bank robbers in jail for the crime of robbing banks. And somehow the demo has sat on my Switch for, like, a month without me playing it, so I clearly have to get on that.
Speaking of inflicting calamitous physical and psychological harm on adorable critters, we've got FUGA: Melodies of Steel 3, which takes the crew of the sentient, child-powered gun fortress Taranis to outerspace. Which seems like a...bit of a thematic detour. But it's still a game about making friends and growing relationships with a bunch of adorable kittens and puppies... then loading them into a giant soul-powered gun and using them to blast a hole right through the entirety of a thinly veiled nazi-analog nation.
This time there's a Mega Soul Cannon which "sacrifices every childs life to assure victory".
Yup... sounds like a FUGA game, all righty.
Speaking of tense turn based tactical RPG combat, but *presumably* with less... y'know... loading children into a gun barrel and firing them at people, we've got Remnants of the Rift, a roguelite about a gal with "Dimension-cop" on her resume and a bunch of universes crashing into one another and so feeling the need to apply a little of the ol' turn based/real time hybrid combat to get that particular squeaky wheel turning properly.
It looks... extremely like my kind of nonsense and I dare imagine I will be picking it up sooner rather than later.
Speaking of weird hybrid gameplay that is my precise kind of nonsense, we have Pinball Spire, one of the rare entries in the Pinballtroidvania genre. I believe this makes... two. You're a pinball who wishes to see the top of the pinball board. Which is basically what Pinball is at its heart. The issue being that aforesaid pinball table is a a vast labyrinth of interconnected trap rooms and also situational upgrades that change how you can interact with the world and explore new areas.
Will it be as good of marriage of exploration platforming and pinball as Yokos Island? ONLY TIME WILL TELL!
And now on to the old games, two of which are KIND OF new games, since they haven't been brought to these shores before; two Sega Saturn games that are famous for, if anything, being varying levels of be-hornt; Variable Geo Advanced is the game that asked the question on everyones lips of "Why isn't the cast of Street Fighter made up entirely of waitresses?". I have no familiarity with the Variable Geo series outside of its reputation but it always looked *kinda clunky*. Conversely, we have Steam Hearts which is a shmup where all the spaceship pilots are anime girls in tiny clothes but also it looks... like a really impressive, cool looking shmup and the partial nudity was added in after the fact of making a visual feast of a game?
And we're closing thigns out with another NSO update; one which, hits the most important criteria there is for a retro-re-release; "Did I have this game when I was a child?" And I'm happy to report, that, yes I did. And so, we kick things off by pointing out and singing the praises of The Sword of Hope, a game that tried to combine a dungeon crawling RPG, with Shadow Gate... on an early Gameboy release, so it is... not especially good at either, but that didn't stop me from playing the hell out of it as a wee tot. Conversely Survival Kids is an RPG where if anything dies, you've done a bad job playing it since its a game about surviving on a desert island, not murdin' up slimes. Gradius: The Interstellar Assault is the second GB Gradius game and it's... a really *really* impressive shmup considering the format. And finally we've got Kirby Star Stacker, which I believe was the final Kirby release on the original Gameboy and was basically Puyo Pop, but with Kirby characters (not to be confused with Kirby Avalanche, which was... also that)
OKAY, GO TO BED!
Kicking a hole in your drywall and throwing an occupied beehive into it this week is Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, a game that looks at The Legend of Zelda and says "What if you had a Yoyo instead?". And since that question was already handily answered by Startropics, appended it by saying "And you were a freaky little rabbit guy who looks like an Ed Roth drawing?
And now you have my attention. I have also just learned I've been confusing Ed Roth with Eli Roth for years
Anyhow, it's a Zeldo, you're a hyperkinetic rabbity thing with a yo-yo and you've opted to throw some bank robbers in jail for the crime of robbing banks. And somehow the demo has sat on my Switch for, like, a month without me playing it, so I clearly have to get on that.
Speaking of inflicting calamitous physical and psychological harm on adorable critters, we've got FUGA: Melodies of Steel 3, which takes the crew of the sentient, child-powered gun fortress Taranis to outerspace. Which seems like a...bit of a thematic detour. But it's still a game about making friends and growing relationships with a bunch of adorable kittens and puppies... then loading them into a giant soul-powered gun and using them to blast a hole right through the entirety of a thinly veiled nazi-analog nation.
This time there's a Mega Soul Cannon which "sacrifices every childs life to assure victory".
Yup... sounds like a FUGA game, all righty.
It looks... extremely like my kind of nonsense and I dare imagine I will be picking it up sooner rather than later.
Speaking of weird hybrid gameplay that is my precise kind of nonsense, we have Pinball Spire, one of the rare entries in the Pinballtroidvania genre. I believe this makes... two. You're a pinball who wishes to see the top of the pinball board. Which is basically what Pinball is at its heart. The issue being that aforesaid pinball table is a a vast labyrinth of interconnected trap rooms and also situational upgrades that change how you can interact with the world and explore new areas.
Will it be as good of marriage of exploration platforming and pinball as Yokos Island? ONLY TIME WILL TELL!
And now on to the old games, two of which are KIND OF new games, since they haven't been brought to these shores before; two Sega Saturn games that are famous for, if anything, being varying levels of be-hornt; Variable Geo Advanced is the game that asked the question on everyones lips of "Why isn't the cast of Street Fighter made up entirely of waitresses?". I have no familiarity with the Variable Geo series outside of its reputation but it always looked *kinda clunky*. Conversely, we have Steam Hearts which is a shmup where all the spaceship pilots are anime girls in tiny clothes but also it looks... like a really impressive, cool looking shmup and the partial nudity was added in after the fact of making a visual feast of a game?
And we're closing thigns out with another NSO update; one which, hits the most important criteria there is for a retro-re-release; "Did I have this game when I was a child?" And I'm happy to report, that, yes I did. And so, we kick things off by pointing out and singing the praises of The Sword of Hope, a game that tried to combine a dungeon crawling RPG, with Shadow Gate... on an early Gameboy release, so it is... not especially good at either, but that didn't stop me from playing the hell out of it as a wee tot. Conversely Survival Kids is an RPG where if anything dies, you've done a bad job playing it since its a game about surviving on a desert island, not murdin' up slimes. Gradius: The Interstellar Assault is the second GB Gradius game and it's... a really *really* impressive shmup considering the format. And finally we've got Kirby Star Stacker, which I believe was the final Kirby release on the original Gameboy and was basically Puyo Pop, but with Kirby characters (not to be confused with Kirby Avalanche, which was... also that)
OKAY, GO TO BED!
